Author's NoteThis is a book that celebrates food and the people who make it. But it is also a book about how violence changes our treasured food cultures. Most people I’ve written about in these pages felt safe and comfortable sharing the details of their lives and personalities; others did not. Yet they still wanted their stories told without putting them at greater risk. Therefore, I’ve occasionally changed names, dates, and locations, as well as other details, to give cover to people I’ve written about. We are talking about violence, after all, and some of the people you will meet are still at risk, even those in exile. For example, as recently as 2023, the Chinese government has been operating undeclared police stations in New York, London, Rome, Tokyo, and Toronto to harass and silence critics, such as the Uyghur activists you’ll meet later in this book. It’s not just the Chinese Communist Party that is guilty of this. Dozens of other governments have targeted their critics living abroad.
Second, I have limited the book to only a handful of cases where violence changed cuisines. I chose those that I thought were the clearest examples of the phenomenon to make the strongest case (at least to me) for why the world should be more proactive in protecting our culinary heritage during war. Moreover, I chose them because they involve people whom the world seems to have forgotten. There are, unfortunately, countless examples, old and new, of violence wreaking havoc on our food cultures. In fact, new wars broke out every few months while I was writing this: the civil wars in Myanmar and Sudan; the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the attacks on Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran; and Israel’s assaults on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. And each day, a ceasefire in Kashmir feels more fragile. Food traditions are at risk in all these conflicts. I wish I could have included many more chapters.
Finally, there are recipes at the end of each chapter. I endeavored to keep them as close as possible to the original versions provided to me. That said, I did make a few adjustments with the help of the skilled editors at Crown to adapt the recipes—some of which were developed in restaurants—for home kitchens.
Copyright © 2025 by Michael Shaikh. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
